[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource GamesPress.]

One subset of the Game Industry that is gaining popularity for
some time would be E-Sports: Where gamers can play a variety of
titles professionally earning them big money and the developers
massive exposure.

With the recent DOTA 2 tournament big
enough to get an airing on ESPN 2, we figured it would be a good
time to talk a little about what E-Sports is and some
considerations if you want to aim your title to this crowd.

The Games:

When it comes to E-Sports, competitive games are the ones that
draw the most people and have the biggest prize pots. Currently,
the most popular genres are fighting, strategy, FPS and MOBAs for
tournaments.

Strategy games at the moment only have one big name and that
would be
Starcraft 2 by
Blizzard, but that is a big enough name.
Starcraft was one of the first games to become an E-Sports craze
and a major title during the run of the World Cyber
Games.

The Street Fighter series continues to be one of the biggest
draws for E-Sports

FPS titles run the gambit:
Team Fortress 2,
Call of Duty,
Battlefield and a lot more. Due to the team
based atmosphere and competitive play, makes the genre very popular
among E-Sports audiences.

The E-Sports market has been around for a number of years and
there have been several major organizations spring up that any
designer needs to know about.

The Organizations:

The longest standing organization for E-Sports was the World
Cyber Games. Popularized thanks to Starcraft, this South Korean
based organization held yearly tournaments for big prizes for over
ten years. As of 2014 however, with the changing markets the WCG
has cease all future tournaments.

That leaves us with two other groups that most gamers know
about.
EVO or Evolution Champion Series is the
biggest fighting game tournament in the world and has annual
competitions. The fighting games that we mentioned above were all
featured at EVO and the competition draws people from all over the
world to it.

League of Legends was the first MOBA to achieve massive
success with the general and E-Sports crowd

Major League Gaming or MLG is the other
major company and has done a lot to legitimize the E-Sports scene.
Players can sign up, find teams and sponsors and the whole site has
streaming of games for viewers who want to see things in action.
While EVO is mainly a yearly competition, MLG runs multiple
tournaments a year, broken down into seasons. MLG also doesn't just
stick to one genre or game, but runs a variety of tournaments for
vastly different titles.

As E-Sports continues to grow, it has left game makers with some
unique considerations when it comes to designing games.

The E-Sports Market:

Games that are popular among E-Sports are different compared to
mainstream or casual offerings. To go into detail about the game
design present would be too big for this post, but we can talk
about some of the broad differences.

First is that despite the classic 80s movie: The Wizard,
E-Sports has grown around competitive based games as opposed to
single player offerings. The genres we mentioned at the start grew
in popularity thanks to their competitive atmosphere and the skill
level needed to play professionally.

If this really is a prime time sport why is it not on TV?
I think our generation of fans is pretty unique in the sense that
they’re not consuming their content via TV. I think
even when our fans have TVs they’re watching LCS streaming
via PC or something – Not the typical cable subscriber.

They’re using Netflix, Hulu, or streaming through their
Xbox. TV’s not a priority or a goal, but if it happens
it will be a natural byproduct of what’s happening. -- Dustin
Beck,
Riot Games

An interesting side effect of the E-Sports popularity is how
many designers are now adding modes and options exclusively for
E-Sports play. Spectator modes, announcer options, twitch upload
functionality and so on. This makes your game easier to be watched
by people and can help it in the E-Sports market. These elements
are important for group based titles or those that have a lot going
on like strategy games or FPS.

Why Aim for the E-Sports Market?

The E-Sports market may have grown separate from the Game
Industry, but that doesn't mean that you can't capitalize on
it.

Creating a game that is not only popular to play but to watch
can mean a lot of money and recognition for your studio. Street
Fighter has become one of the most popular brands from
Capcom and the success of it at EVO gives
the game a much longer shelf life. This has also provided Capcom
with a huge group of dedicated fans who look to each new iteration
with anticipation

Unfortunately, while studios like Capcom and Riot Games have
made a name for themselves, it's a lot harder for new companies to
enter the E-Sports Arena. No matter what you do, how you pitch your
game or even design it exclusively for the E-Sports audience,
ultimately the fans will decide whether or not to accept it.

Smash Brothers was intended to be a casual party game, but the
hardcore took a liking to it and turned it into one of the more
popular competitive games sitting alongside Street Fighter and Call
of Duty.

E-Sports has certainty changed over the last two decades and
moved from being a completely hardcore experience to one that can
be watched by a casual audience. It will be interesting to see if
by the end of the decade whether or not E-Sports will make their
way to TV networks. We already saw DOTA 2 broadcast on ESPN 2, but
it's hard to tell if the home market is ready for it.